After 'suicide by cop' threat, Middlebury man is shot dead

Police are investigating whether suspect's bullet or their own killed former correctional officer in Middlebury gun battle

Oct. 5, 2012

Middlebury Police Chief Thomas Hanley reports that George Demarais, 57, of Middlebury, who had threatened to commit 'suicide by cop' is dead after an exchange of gunfire on Thursday afternoon. Hanley says Demarais left written suicide note and a will taped to his door. / EMILY MCMANAMY/FREE PRESS

The home of George Demarais, 57, of Middlebury, who had threatened to commit 'suicide by cop' is dead after an exchange of gunfire on Thursday afternoon. / EMILY MCMANAMY/FREE PRESS

George Demarais, 57, of Middlebury, who was shot and killed during an exchange of gunfire with police on Thursday, Oct. 4, 2012. / Courtesy Vermont State Police

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MIDDLEBURY — As the team of officers advanced on his hideout in the woods behind the pale yellow house, George Demarais began shooting.

“His firing position was fairly well conceived,” Middlebury Police Chief Tom Hanley said. “A couple of large boulders, some knocked-down logs. He had several weapons with him: several rifles, shotguns. Quite a store of ammunition. Food stores, stores of water. He had a battle helmet.”

Hanley said Demarais, 57, had long been preparing for the shootout he had with Middlebury police Thursday evening off the wooded stretch of Vermont 116, near the Middlebury-Bristol border. He had taped a last will and testament to his front door and given his pet cats to the local animal shelter. After calling 911 and threatening to commit “suicide by cop,” he posted a note on his car, inviting the officers who responded to his house to meet him out back.

“Come and get me,” the note read, according to Hanley. “I hope you can shoot straight, because I can.”

The authorities say Demarais got his wish. Following a lengthy firefight, the former corrections officer lay dead; police are investigating whether it was a law-enforcement bullet or a self-inflicted gunshot that killed him. The incident was the second fatal shooting involving Vermont police this year. No officers were wounded.

“His idea apparently was to draw the officers up from the house, directly up to where he had a clear view,” Hanley said Friday. “Where things went awry for him is the officers approached him from flanking positions.”

The four Middlebury police officers, armed with M-16s and a .45-caliber carbine, exchanged fire with Demarais for about 40 minutes, according to the police chief. In between bursts, Demarais taunted the officers, the chief said.

“All during the confrontation, the officers continued, even after the shots were fired, to try to talk him down,” Hanley said. “You usually see, at some shootings, hundreds of rounds — that wasn’t the case here. This was very controlled. Very disciplined. The intent was not to annihilate this person. The intent was to get him help. The return fire was simply defensive. I mean, they had to suppress the fire that they were getting.”

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Eventually, Demarais stopped taunting. And firing. The officers approached slowly and found that he had been shot dead.

Whether the officers had shot Demarais, or Demarais had shot himself, remains unclear. The Vermont State Police, who are investigating the shooting, remained at the scene Friday and said an autopsy will be performed at the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Burlington to determine how Demarais died.

Hanley described Demarais as a loner who hadn’t spoken to relatives in years. The former corrections officer was unemployed and was going to lose his house to a tax sale this week, police said.

Police called

Demarais called 911 at about noon Thursday, identified himself, said he lived at 5454 Case St. — state route 116 — and said he “wanted to die via suicide by cop,” according to police. After failing to reach Demarais by phone, officers drove to his house, set up a perimeter across the road and evacuated the few nearby homes.

“We didn’t go banging on his door,” Hanley said. “We took position around the house, and we continued to try and make contact with him over the next several hours, watching the house, not even sure if he was there.”

Neighbor Leo Lessor recalled that he had no sooner returned home from work at about 3:45 p.m. than he was being evacuated.

“I walked over to get the mail,” Lessor recalled Friday morning. Then his girlfriend came out of the house “and says, ‘We gotta leave. The Middlebury Police just called and said we gotta leave.’”

Lessor said he then looked across the lawn at a police officer signaling to him from next door.

“I’m not really sure what he said, but he made a motion like, ‘Get outta there,’” Lessor recalled.

According to Hanley, at about 4 p.m. Demarais walked out the front door of his house with a long gun, either a rifle or a shotgun, and faced the officers across the road. The officers told him to drop the gun, but Demarais held onto it and walked toward the woods behind his house, Hanley said.

Hanley said six of his officers, or about half the force, had responded to Demarais’ house by that time and were talking to mental-health counselors on the phone while trying to reach Demarais. State police and Middlebury firefighters had closed off a stretch of highway leading up to the house, and an ambulance waited in the wings. Another two hours passed.

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“We were trying to make arrangements with TSU (the Tactical Support Unit) and a hostage negotiator from the state police,” Hanley recalled. “However, time was not our friend. It was getting very dark in those woods at six o’clock.”

State police said in a statement Friday evening that the tactical team was on its way when the situation escalated.

The gunfight

Hanley said his officers, shielded in ballistic armor and heavily armed with weapons they practice shooting monthly, moved in on Demarais’ position at about 6:15 p.m.

“We had this person who was armed, clearly committed to use violence, up in the woods, so that’s why we had to deal with it,” Hanley said.

Hanley, Middlebury’s police chief for the past 21 years, said the ensuing gun battle was the first police shooting in his town since at least the 1970s.

Hanley said he did not know how many rounds were fired during the shootout, or where Demarais had been shot. The chief said the Addison County State’s Attorney’s Office would review the state police investigation into the shooting.

Lessor, Demarais’ neighbor, said Demarais had inherited the house and moved in about five years ago, after his stepfather died. Lessor said Demarais’ mother had died a few years earlier.

Like Hanley, Lessor described Demarais as a loner who generally kept to himself but had come over once to use the phone.

“But he wasn’t too friendly about it then,” Lessor said Friday. “I’ve been trying to be friendly with him. Wave to him when I’m mowing the lawn. No response. Not even a wave back. … I got his mail and brought it over to him. Not even a thank you.”

The Department of Corrections’ commissioner’s office did not return a message left Friday afternoon seeking comment about Demarais’ employment.

Thursday’s gunfight was the second fatal shooting to involve police in Vermont this year. In April, state trooper Dustin Robinson shot burglary suspect Jonathan Martel in he woods of Cambridge when the suspect turned and pointed a metallic object at the trooper, according to the Attorney General’s Office. The attorney general said the shooting was justified, because Robinson believed “he was in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury.”

Robinson said he opened fire after Martel refused to obey his instructions and twice pointed what appeared to be a handgun at the trooper. That item turned out to be a cellphone.